From the Richmond Examiner, 7/17/1863

THE HOSPITALS – About fifteen hundred of the wounded in the Gettysburg
battles have been received in Richmond at the Seabrook receiving hospital, from
whence they are distributed to the others. With the influx of the wounded recurs
the occasion for the display of woman’s heroism and ministering attentions to
the disabled. The praise of the ladies of Richmond is in all the cities, and
their past labors in the cause of humanity is indicative of what they are ready
and anxious to do again when the necessity arises. There are hundreds of
“Florence Nightengales” in the city willing to devote their hours to the
alleviation of the soldier’s misery and suffering; whose kind offices, though
unheralded to the world, are treasured up in the hearts of soldiers throughout
the Confederacy. Woman, the light of every household, are angels in the
hospitals and at the cot of the languishing soldier, far away from wife, mother
and sister. Then we invite the ladies to visit the hospitals, daily if they can,
carrying with them the delicacies they can afford, and which only a woman’s
hand can prepare. Their presence dispels the gloom of those gloomy receptacles
of wrecked humanity, cheers the wounded, is sunshine to the sick, and hope to
the desponding. It may be said there are sights to be encountered in the
hospitals shocking to the finer sensibilities of ladies. True, but the women of
Virginia, and Richmond especially, are not weak nerved. Their experience has not
been a stern one, to many a bitter one, and mock modesty and delicacy they have
long since sacrificed to the necessities of the times, and the emergencies of
the hour.